Evacuation is an important aspect of an emergency situation such as fire, gas leak, chemical spill, etc. Locating devices aid in this process by emitting sound patterns that enable occupants of a premise to locate the origin of the sound. Because said sounders are installed near points of egress, an occupant can find the exits more easily. One such system has been disclosed and claimed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/447,376 filed Jun. 6, 2006 entitled “Methods and Systems for Controlling Directional Sounders for Route Guidance”. The '376 application has been assigned to the assignee hereof and is incorporated herein by reference.
If during an evacuation, the path to the point of egress becomes hazardous, it would be best if the output of the locating devices marking the point of egress could be altered. Because there may be multiple locating devices marking a long path of egress, it would be advantageous to be able to set parameters of each one individually in a system with many installed. Egress paths can be then adaptively created based on the locating device configurations.
There thus continues to be need for more flexible audible output devices, and systems of same than have previously been available.